Abstract
The levels of production diseases (PD) and the cow replacement rate are high in dairy farming. They indicate excessive production demands on the cow and a poor state of animal welfare. This is the subject of increasing public debate. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of production diseases on the economic sustainability of dairy farms. The contributions of individual culled cows to the farm’s economic performance were calculated, based on milk recording and accounting data from 32 farms in Germany. Cows were identified as ‘profit cows’ when they reached their individual ‘break-even point’. Data from milk recordings (yield and indicators for PD) were used to cluster farms by means of a principal component and a cluster analysis. The analysis revealed five clusters of farms. The average proportion of profit cows was 57.5%, 55.6%, 44.1%, 29.4% and 19.5%. Clusters characterized by a high proportion of cows with metabolic problems and high culling and mortality rates had lower proportions of profit cows, somewhat irrespective of the average milk-yield per cow. Changing the perception of PD from considering it as collateral damage to a threat to the farms’ economic viability might foster change processes to reduce production diseases.
Highlights
IntroductionProduction Diseases Affect Animal Welfare and Economic Viability
Aiming to account for varying contextual conditions in different farm situations, we aimed to develop a typology of farms, which would generate roughly homogenous groups of farms regarding patterns of milk production and production diseases based on information from milk recording data
The principal component analysis yielded three factors with eigenvalues, exceeding 1 which accounted for 78.4% of the total variance. (Table 2)
Summary
Production Diseases Affect Animal Welfare and Economic Viability. Production diseases reflect production induced stressors and indicate an overstressing of the ability of animals to adapt and cope with suboptimal living conditions. They cause pain, suffering and injury and indicate poor animal welfare [9,10]. Metabolic disorders, or mammary and uterine infection are not related to a single cause but are affected by multiple factors. In this context, farm management plays a pivotal role in guarding against production diseases [11,12].
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